I’ve got a 650b Orange Five and I like the way a 29er front wheel handles on other bikes.
I have this (mad/bad) idea of trying to fit a 29er front to the bike.
Liteville have the 29”/27.5” wheel mix on their XL bikes and the reviews are good.
Loco has done similar to his trek (although it started life as a 26” frame).

What do people think?

My rambling thoughts;
– What travel 29” fork? 120/130/140mm ?
– What would the effect be on the geometry?
– How to correct the geometry?

Any ideas would be great, thanks.

I can’t help with any experiences, but it is something I’ve considered a few times too. In fact, I’m not sure why I’ve never tried it as it sounds perfect on paper.

I have a 26″ Five and a 29er Solaris. I love the way the front wheel on the Solaris ploughs through stuff, but I prefer almost everything else about the Five. I’ve contemplated a 29er from Orange a few times and it’s always the longer rear that makes me pause. Putting the 120mm fork and wheel from the Solaris on the Five ought to work.

Hmmmm.

Roverpig, glad I’m not alone! Exactly my thoughts. I like the rear of the Five but the front doesn’t feel as fun as 29”. I contemplated selling or swapping the Five for a Gyro/Segment but then I want the snappy rear of the 650b.

Probably just means we’re both mad then. See you in the asylum 🙂

haha, I’ll drink to that.

Little bit of digging;
A-t-c on 160mm Pike 650b= 552mm
A-t-c on 130mm Revs 29”= 548 mm
That’s -4mm in the forks but + 38.1 mm for the 29” over 27.5”, = +32mm..

How can I compensate for the 32mm?
> Angleset +2° ?
> Offset shock bushing set to + ?

You won’t die…, Specialized Big Hit 24″ rear/26″ front and Trek 69ers anyone? 🙂

The difference in wheel size that matters is the radius rather than diameter if you’re adding it to the A-C length difference, which means it’s only 15mm different.

Try it and see?

Reinventing the Penny Farthing 🙂
Sounds like it could be interesting.

The difference in wheel size that matters is the radius rather than diameter if you’re adding it to the A-C length difference, which means it’s only 15mm different.

Right you are! Thanks. 15mm isn’t much.
– I should think that some offset shock bushings in ‘+’ mode would lower the BB enough?
– Do we think that the headangle will be okay for the bike?

I could use a RS Rev 120mm instead of 130mm, that’ll take off 10mm, leaving me with 5mm difference. Or I could run a little more sag on the forks.

i wondered about this but in 650b front 26″ rear on an old five. Not for any performance benefit but just for easing the future availbility of stuff for at least one end of the bike. didnt bother in the end.

5mm higher on the front will make no noticeable difference. Different front / rear tyres can have the same effect.

Cant decide if Having less travel on the front compared to the rear will have any negative effect on the ride.

I’m buying a cheap set of RS Revs in 130mm, which can also be internally adjusted from 100-140mm.
I’ve already got the front wheel- ProII on Flow with a Spec Purgatory 2.3.
I’ll report back in a couple weeks.

When my 26″ Covert need a new front rim in a few years when they may not be easily available I’ll be plugging some 650b forks and a 650b rim on it, will go for 150mm travel instead of 160 to even it out.

An lo the Five69 was born and the people did look upon it and say WTF and there was much wailing and knashing of teeth 🙂

Unfortunately this was a short lived experiment as the steerer was just a bit too short (even with no spacers).

Don’t fancy riding that down anything rough! I did give it a quick spin around the garden. The low speed handling was as awful as you’d expect. According to the phone the HA was around 66 degrees, so pretty slack for a 120mm 29er 🙂

A quick spin up and down a track suggested that it might actually be good fun, but not good enough to be worth buying a new fork I’m afraid. Looking forward to hearing cokie’s experiences though. It should work better starting from 650B rather than 26″ If it’s too much, how about a 650B+ on the front?

Singletrack – 97.5er full suspension

Hey guys this is brilliant 🙂 I just found this by researching what my bike might look like with the project that I have planned. I have been spending a lot of my recent weeks thinking about geometry, handling and performance good and bad concerned with various wheel sizes, factoring skinny and wider tyres on varying size wheels. I find it fascinating, so I decided after making my first 96er (old type mountain bike with 26 back wheel and a road bike wheel on the front). That it may be time to get a full suspension bike as a 96er out of some left over parts that I have but would still need to buy more.

So I just recently bought these items:

Dt Swiss XMM 29 forks, carbon steerer and crown with twin shot remote lockout. It’s a two stage lockout, can lock out fully or partly by restricting the rebound mechanism and thereby reducing the fork travel from 120mm – 80mm. Good for racing 🙂

Trek scratch 9 2010 – downhill / free ride frame with 170mm travel and also fits a 650b nobby Nic 2.35 tyre.The nobby Nic runs at 706.5mm, which leaves 4.7mm clearance from the frame axle to top of yoke. This measures 358mm from the arch to the centre of the axle, the chain stays has slightly more clearance at 362mm. The shock is fox rp2 with pro-pedal and the only bad thing about this frame is that it weighs 3.5 kg.

The trek was bought with a 26 back wheel in mind with the 29er front end, then I realised that people are using these frames as enduro bikes with 650b wheels. So after measuring and researching and also doing a bit of maths I came to the above conclusions of numbers.

These are the other things that I have:

700mm carbon low riser bar.
60mm 7050 grade alloy stem.
Alloy seat post
Carbon saddle or old flite selle Italia, leather with padding and weighs 295g
Xx1 cranks or sworks carbon mountain cranks, with 32 or 36t rings that I currently have.
Xx1 rear dérailleur
Kms x10 chains and one X11 Kms chain.
Foam grips or rubber type.
Stans no tubes solution and rim tape.

So I need to organise more parts to finish the bike, but it’s a good start. I aim to finish the bike off with a final weight of around 12kg, or 26.4 lb.

This is using carbon rims of 390g 30mm wide, which are not cheap and will take me some time to get it going.

Tyres – nobby Nic 27.5 x 2.35 rear and 29 x 2.35 front (or 2.25 x 29 I’m not sure yet).
Valves for running no tubes.
Cassette xx1
Gear cables – alloy outers and friction coated inners.
Refurbish the hope headset – needs new bearings.
Xx1 gear shifter.
7075 alloy hydraulic brakes single Pistons with 180mm front disc and 160 rear.
Egg beater pedals.

I need to source the other items to make the bike

That is quite interesting. Tagged for future reference.